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This was part of an infographic that I came across recently:
Now, unless I've totally forgotten how to math, isn't it only possible for 50% of Americans, at the most, to have "above-average" concerns about their dog's weight and physical activity?
Isn't the average level of concern about a thing defined by a sample of those who are concerned about it?
Ie: No matter what the total level of concern is, the "average" should be the mean of all persons concerned.
It depends on how you measure concern. Is this concern that a person has for anything? In other words, I don't have concern about my blender working, I have some concern about my internet dropping out, and I have a lot of concern about my dog's weight.
If you're only talking about America's concern over their dog's weight, then yes, you are mostly correct. Then it would just depend on how they average; the whole mean, median, and mode thing. I'm pretty sure you can take a mean after taking a median and have a higher number than 50%.
You are assuming that the level of care is equally distributed on both sides of a bell curve.
In actuality, there could be fewer people who care so little that it scews the distribution.
For instance, say we have ten people who are surveyed about their level of give a ****.
The scale is from 1-10; 1 being no ***** given, and 10 being so concerned they could literally die.
4 people score their concern at 1, 3 at 5, 1 at 7 and 2 at 9.
The average level of concern is 4.4.
In this case, 3/5ths of the population surveyed cares more than average.
Here is a shot from Google Maps Street View a few blocks from my home which, I swear, I came across completely at random while searching for the best entrance into the emissions inspection place: